Platform

Forty summers ago, the Democratic Party convened in Miami Beach and, in even more unruly than usual fashion, nominated George McGovern as its Presidential candidate. On Tuesday, July 11, 1972, the second night of the Convention, those delegates who had stayed on the premises, and awake—the session finally adjourned at 6:24 A.M. Wednesday—witnessed a succession of speakers advocating mostly left-of-center minority planks to the Party platform. One introduced herself this way: “My name is Madeline Davis. I am an elected delegate from the 37th Congressional District, Buffalo, New York. I am a woman. I am a lesbian.”

The balance of Davis’s remarks—she talked for slightly more than three minutes—was equally plainspoken: an appeal to her fellow-Democrats to endorse platform language in defense of the rights of gay people to live their lives with the same civil liberties and protections as all Americans. Never before had delegates to a major political convention been asked to consider such a proposition. Davis was followed at the lectern by a female delegate from Ohio who, with the tacit approval of the Party leadership, delivered a rebuttal that grouped homosexuality with pedophilia and prostitution. On a voice vote, the minority plank was defeated.

Now seventy-two and a retired public librarian, Davis still lives in the Buffalo area, along with her wife, Wendy, and their two dogs and three cats. Last Monday, she returned from a mid-morning walk and switched on the TV. The dial was set to MSNBC—she’d been following the Olympics—and there came a news report that the Democratic platform-drafting committee had decided to adopt marriage equality as a plank in the 2012 campaign. Davis did not expect the phone to ring with congratulatory calls—and it didn’t—nor did she start whooping it up in her kitchen. The following day, when a reporter called, she said, “It’s a very nice gift, but it’s not going to change my life. In the end it could, but not today.”

In other words, Davis remains as illusion-free as she was forty years ago. “To have it in a party platform, of course, is a very exciting thing,” she said. “But, if Obama doesn’t get elected, we don’t get anything. For this to become law, there have to be a lot of votes in the Congress. And there’s the Supreme Court and . . .”

One afternoon a few weeks earlier, Davis had sat in her living room and reflected upon her historic cameo in 1972. Though she’d been immersed in gay life since the mid-sixties, she was an artist, not an activist. During college and graduate school, at the University of Buffalo, she played guitar and sang in coffeehouses, acted, and wrote poetry and music. In 1971, two years after the Stonewall riots, she joined a gay-rights demonstration in Albany. Just before it began, one of the leaders informed her—“because I was a woman and I lived upstate”—that she would be making a speech. “I don’t remember the speech,” she recalled, “except for the last line: ‘It’s a beautiful day for a revolution.’ ” A year later, though she had never voted and had just registered as a Democrat, she became a McGovern delegate to that summer’s Convention.

“I had no idea how important this was,” she said, referring to the Convention speech. “I found myself in this pool of very big fish and I felt very small. I suppose having a fairly intact ego got me through. I knew we were right. It was one of those ‘God is on our side’ moments—not that I believe that sort of thing.”

Davis has curly gray hair, a strong jaw, dark-brown eyes, and an imposing presence. She wore black slacks, white Nikes, and a white cotton blouse that hid her tattoos. Though she remains the titular head of an extensive archive, housed at Buffalo State College, that documents the history of the Buffalo L.G.B.T. community, she hasn’t had a day job since 1995.

“I speak publicly at least four or five times a year,” she said. “Everybody from grade-school teachers to college classes to political groups. I still write music, I quilt, I embroider, I’m a gardener. Wendy and I have been doing dog rescue for years. I’ve been writing my memoirs. I finished them early last year, but I’ve looked them over and decided they need a total rewrite. Otherwise, we’re just your regular getting-old lesbian married couple on the street.” ♦

Mark Singer, a longtime contributor to the magazine, is the author of several books, including “Character Studies.”